Music
While many critics decried 2011 as a musical wasteland, New England residents can allow auld acquaintance to be forgot in 2012 with the cornucopia of music that’s coming to the Northeast. Warm up with these winter events …
The extraordinary intensity the ensemble achieved at soft dynamic levels and their very natural sense of the movement’s pacing were both quite impressive.
It was with great sadness that I learned that on the day after Christmas 2011 pneumonia carried off an underappreciated giant of jazz, saxophonist and composer Sam Rivers. His 88 years took him on a long journey from his midwestern origins to decades here in Boston and later in New York to a rich late period in the somewhat improbable locale of Orlando, Florida.
Highlights in classical music during January include a visit by the acclaimed cappella group Anonymous Four at the Gardner Museum’s new concert hall, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project performing “Strange Bedfellows: Unlikely Concertos.”
Adrienne Cooper’s strong voice –- musically, linguistically and as a vibrant feminist presence –- shaped the revival of klezmer music in the 1980s and beyond, but her legacy is diffuse.
Legendary soul and gospel diva Mavis Staples will ‘take you there’, into the New Year, at Symphony Hall (@ 9 p.m.) this Saturday, December 31th, marking the performer’s First Night debut in Boston.
Most importantly, there were the amazing, booming acoustics of St. Paul’s, which favored the soaring soprano voices that were, for me, the reason to see this excellent ensemble.
As nicely played as the Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky were, I left feeling that there was something distinctly anticlimactic about the Aviv Quartet’s programming choices. I would much rather have heard the Erwin Schulhoff close the evening –- or at least heard it sandwiched between the Romantic selections.
What the few of us in Jordan Hall heard that night was a richly conceived and beautifully performed song cycle, mostly serious, but with some great wit in exactly the right places. It made for a fascinating and enlightening contrast to the CD version of “Vespers,” which Steve Lacy recorded in 1993.
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